EA On Battle Royale: “We’re Interested In Experimenting With a Free-to-Play Standalone Game”

Got enough battle royale games in your library yet? Well, hang on, because Electronic Arts is considering jumping into the pool — which should come as no surprise to anyone, really.

On a recent investor’s call, EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen was asked about whether Battlefield V’s battle royale mode might be split off into its own title — similar to what H1Z1 and Fortnite did previously. According to GamesIndustry, he responded in the negative, but also offered the possibility that something else could be coming down the line:

“We’re interested in experimenting with a free-to-play standalone game that might be in a shooter genre or another genre, but I don’t think that’s how we’re looking at the Battlefield stuff right now.”

Sure, saying “We’re interested” can mean just about anything in game development, from “Some of our people discussed it at lunch” to “We’re already created a division to explore it and given them resources.” My guess is that Jorgensen’s statement leans more toward the former, though with the pace that gaming tends to go these days — and how quickly a functional F2P battle royale game can be cobbled together — I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned something more solid by the end of the year.

One interesting point is Jorgensen saying that EA’s F2P battle royale game would be “in a shooter genre or another genre.” What could that other genre be? The Sims battle royale? Madden battle royale? Or, given that it’s EA, maybe it’ll be “Loot Box Battle Royale”: 100 people buy a loot box, but only one person gets anything out of it.

the author

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of
experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online
Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

4 Readers Commented

EA had a free Battlefield, a free Need for Speed and free Team Fortress-like game. They closed servers to all of them and failed to make them work. If they make their BR game work, more power to them but I highly doubt that…